When Fear Puts Us At Risk

One of the things I have noticed in the many years I worked personal protection and taught self-defense was the unflagging conviction that the vast majority of people had about criminal attacks and how it would affect them. Almost without fail they believe that they traveled in circles that would not experience real criminal violence because they went to “good” parts of town, or the lived in “good” neighborhoods, or the shopped in “upscale” places that didn’t let “those kinds” of people in.

Now this isn’t surprising in and of itself, we see people hiding from reality in order to make themselves feel better all the time. What is surprising is the fact that many of these people are intelligent, driven people willing to put themselves and their families at risk by denying the evidence which tells them they are in denial. They do so primarily for one of two reasons; they do not recognize the daily news articles pointing out the increasing violence and the ease with which it can be inflicted upon someone, and secondly, the random nature of criminal attacks. I guess there is a third probable option that we should also admit; they recognize these things and it simply scares them to name and recognize them openly because it makes it concrete for them.

When fear puts us at risk, it does so for a logical reason; we have forgotten how to rely on ourselves. Thus any thought of having to physically protect of ourselves causes us to freeze in fear of failure or fear of stepping up and taking personal responsibility. I suspect the latter is more often the root cause. It takes its status as most likely culprit because it is the socially dominant message we receive when being taught how to deal with any kind of asocial attack, be it terrorist or criminal in nature. We are always taught to call someone else, to phone the police or flee the scene, or surrender our premises to the invader. This is how we are brought up. It is the sum product of “civilizing” our social interaction without recognizing the need to inculcate self-protection into the creed by which we live. Thus as we become more civilized we push people into becoming prey for those who live among us as predators.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman wrote a book classifying people into three categories; sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. He astutely points out that given social programming of the kind we are actively promoting, we have created a society where most people are sheep; casually going through life while actively ignoring the dangers building around them until the wolves attack. Then the sheep do what sheep have been programmed to do, they call for help and those caught by the wolves are ravaged and fed upon. The sheepdog are those who protect us, circling around us, not trusted by the sheep because the nature of the sheepdog is to use the same violence as the wolves and the moral programming of the sheepdog is the only thing stopping them from turning on the sheep. And so the sheep fear the sheepdog but they do not hesitate to expect protection from them when the attack occurs.

Usually the sheepdogs can drive off the wolves with a minimal loss of sheep. Thus the sacrifice of one or a few allows many to continue on in blissful denial. Just like the sheep who several months ago sat on a bus to Edmonton, Alberta. These sheep, living in the land of non-violent Canadians (who have managed to deny that any real violence ever happens there with a skill at self-denial that borders on the insane) that watched a wolf among them cut the head off one of their flock without doing anything except escaping to another pasture.

Again the question arises; what happens if the wolves attack the flock and find instead that they are all sheepdogs? Well there would be a very bloody and mangled pile of wolves and the flock would be safer from future attacks because the law of predation says to pick the easiest victim and so the wolves left would seek another meal ticket. They would be reminded, if each sheep chose to be sheepdog, of the old adage TANSTAAFL. There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

I don’t know if we will ever get rid of the anti-human agenda set up by those who wish to “civilize” us by destroying the individual and creating a “sheep” society. The use of fear for our safety through the appointing of judges who allow violent felons free and laws that are pro-criminal keep the wolves among us. That heightened sense of fear drives us into ever-greater divesting of individual reliance in favor of government providing policing, thus reducing our ability to defend society as a whole. We need to adopt the Israeli model of citizenry. Proactive response to criminals among us will cull these animals from among us. When we see a criminal preparing to drive into a crowd, we shoot him. Did anyone notice the effectiveness of this action in Jerusalem or the West Bank areas when terrorists (criminals) attacked? Often no civilian casualties, just dead wolves.

What would happen if outlaws were treated as they chose to live, gang members who live outside the law have no rights because those rights are within the framework of society’s laws, and they expressly refuse to be part of those laws. Okay by me, you’re a gang member, we shoot on sight. Put them up on pike’s as a warning. How many young kids would sit in front of MTV thinking “boy that gangsta rotting on that pole sure looks cool”. I am guessing that youth gangs and adult ones would be far less attractive.

I do know that if we continue to play by the rules, we hold law-abiding members of our society in a position akin to being staked as bait when criminal attack looms. If we do this, we will surely continue to sacrifice our good members of society to those who are choosing to live among us but not with us. If we do not recognize that asocial means outside of social order and people who choose to initiate asocial force should be dealt with in a manner logically consistent with their actions, then we protect those who would destroy and feed upon our goodness. I will just keep hoping that the bleating of the sheep to be saved will be replaced with a rallying cry; that the sheep will find their moral compass and fortitude and help the sheepdogs kill the wolves

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